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The Road Videos 11 videos

The Road Part 1: The Introduction
9365 Views

Well, the world has ended, which is a total bummer. We didn’t even get a chance to sell our super valuable Beanie Baby collection. We hope you’...

The Road Part 2: The Setting
12205 Views

The Road is full of emptiness and nobody knows where they’re going. So make a note to self, Shmoopers: when the apocalypse hits, grab a GPS.

The Road Part 3: Words
8884 Views

Always read The Road with a dictionary at hand, because you’re going to need it. Seriously. We’re not known to be perfidious (though we do have...

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The Road Part 2: The Setting 12205 Views


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Description:

The Road is full of emptiness and nobody knows where they’re going. So make a note to self, Shmoopers: when the apocalypse hits, grab a GPS.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

[ scream ]

00:06

The Road

00:07

The Setting

00:08

a la Shmoop

00:10

[ bird caws ]

00:11

What can we learn about the first 20 pages?

00:13

What can't we learn?

00:16

One of the crazy things about The Road is that -

00:18

spoiler alert - we never find out

00:20

what happened.

00:22

All we learn in the first 20 pages

00:24

is the nothingness that is to come from the rest of the book.

00:28

It really sets the tone. And The Road

00:30

does a good job of showing us how

00:32

in a lot of literature, you can,

00:34

within the first page, 20 pages,

00:36

figure out exactly how the rest of the book is gonna read.

00:38

And that's exactly what happens. It's very sparse.

00:40

It's very bleak. We get to know

00:43

these two characters, and in the first 20 pages,

00:45

the man and the boy don't have names.

00:47

If they don't have names in the first 20 pages,

00:49

they're probably not gonna have names.

00:51

So we kind of get to know this world of this

00:54

anonymous man and boy who are literally just wandering

00:57

down a road.

00:58

So it's almost the omission of things is a theme here.

01:01

That we don't know what happened. It's almost like saying

01:04

it doesn't matter. Something bad is coming.

01:07

People don't have names, kind of reminds me of Invisible Man.

01:09

One of the main characters didn't have a name.

01:11

- That was a big deal. - Yep.

01:12

And so this is like everyman, or this is sort of

01:16

- a lyrical phrase. - Yeah.

01:18

Yeah, in terms of not knowing

01:20

what happened, it just almost makes it scarier, because

01:23

if we know,

01:25

okay, it was a nuclear war,

01:26

then in our heads, we can be like,

01:28

- "Oh..." - "We'll ban nuclear weapons someday."

01:30

Exactly. "We can figure that out.

01:31

We fixed the hole in the ozone layer, we can ban nuclear weapons."

01:35

But when we don't know what happened, we can't

01:38

- prevent it from happening. - Was it ebola?

01:40

- Was it a virus, or...? - Right. Exactly.

01:42

And we have no idea.

01:43

The only things that we get at the beginning of the book

01:46

are kind of some flashbacks to

01:48

there was a bright light and some sounds.

01:50

- But that could be literally anything. - Yeah, we don't really know.

01:52

It could be war. It could nuclear --

01:54

And the title itself, The Road...

01:55

The road ahead, the road's empty.

01:57

You don't know where you're going.

01:58

- So it's like you're filling in blanks. - Exactly. Exactly. Yep.

02:01

[ pen writing ]

02:03

What tone is delivered by the introduction?

02:06

What do we know about The Road?

02:08

Why don't the main characters have names?

02:12

How does not knowing the characters' names affect the tone?

02:21

[ laughs ] Who wrote this?

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